1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to data storage and more particularly relates to dynamically creating a resource group and automatically backing up the resource group in response to an unanticipated failure event.
2. Description of the Related Art
Given the value of information in today's world, computers and network systems are specially designed to facilitate data backup operations. Some computers, such as personal computers, are designed to allow users to back up information in a fairly straightforward manner. For example, a user may set up a schedule of system backups and select which files should be backed up each time the backup operation is performed.
This typically requires that the user specify the schedule, such as the date and time, as well as the specific files that will be backed up. It is very easy for a user to be either under-inclusive or over-inclusive in specifying which files should be backed up. On a large network system, such as a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), it becomes even more difficult, if not impossible, to manually specify all of the files and data structures that need to be backed up on various occasions.
Conventional backup systems also fail to tailor specific backup operations to certain types of events that may occur. For example, if a hard disk drive fails, the backup data needed to recover from such failure is different that the data needed to recover from a critical system error that affects user or application profiles.
In an effort to more efficiently back up files on a system, several solutions have been proposed. One solution incrementally backs up partitions on a storage device, such as a hard disk drive, which allows individual partitions to be backed up and retrieved. Another proposed solution is specifically directed toward backing up critical data files on a periodic basis. In this way, fairly recent versions of critical files may be recovered after a failure event of some kind. However, a user must specify beforehand which files are considered critical and how often those files should be backed up.
Other proposed solutions require maintenance of a central repository of files that belong to certain commercial software programs. By keeping a list or database of files that belong to an application program, a backup operation may potentially know which files to back up in response to a backup request. However, this solution requires that a software developer designate which application files should be included in a central repository, if available, and that a system administrator maintain the central repository. Reliance on the programmer and administrator, or other users, is subject to error, oversight, and inaccuracy.
In a related art, some solutions propose to restore backup data in response to a failure event. However, this data recovery operation, as well as other data recovery operations, requires that the data must first be backed up. As described above, data backup operations are currently dependent on manual scheduling and file selection by a user and, therefore, are subject to error.
Unfortunately, the proposed solutions fail to facilitate a backup process that operates according to policies which would allow a backup operation to be automatically invoked at any time and without user intervention. This failure is unacceptable in today's computing environment in which the complexity of computer systems gives rise to various unscheduled events, including system failures, hardware failures, data glitches, and so forth. By relying on manual selection of the files that should be backed up, without knowing what type of unscheduled event may occur, the specified files may be useless or less important than other files that might have been backed up under the circumstances of the unscheduled event.
In other words, it may be important to back up different files depending on what type of unscheduled event might occur. By designating the backup files without regard for the various unscheduled events that might occur, the proposed prior art solutions fail to account for the importance of individual files under various system circumstances.
From the foregoing discussion, it should be apparent that a need exists for an apparatus, system, and method that automatically back up a dynamically created resource group in response to an unscheduled system event. Beneficially, such an apparatus, system, and method would overcome the failure of the prior art to dynamically create a resource group that is complimentary to the type of unscheduled system event that occurs. The apparatus, system, and method would also be beneficial if able to overcome the conventional reliance on a scheduled backup that may or may not contain the most recent version of the data.